Cathedral
by damalur
Summary: It's the waiting that kills you. (Shepard, Vakarian, and xenophobia.)


**Cathedral**

* * *

Someday they'll sing songs about her.

Not straightforward songs, not the honest clear-cut legends about heroism and light and that bone-deep knowing, that certainty, that marks the best humanity has to offer. They'll sing songs about her bravery, but not without mentioning her wrath; they'll call her unsinkable, but not without mentioning that hate kept her buoyed as much as conviction. The songs they sing about her will be funeral dirges, ballads where lovers die at the end, chants to ward off evil in the dark.

They'll sing songs about her someday. Not today. Not until she dies. She'd strike anyone who dared; they all know it.

* * *

She strips off her armor and thinks about the Alliance, who puts the armory in the shuttle bay, thinks about Cerberus, who puts it near the airlock. There's blood drying under her fingernails. Must be her own; no way any part of that batarian pisshead could make it through the armor's seals.

"—won't include that in the mission write-up," Miranda says. "Shepard? Are you all right?"

"Fine," she says. "Cut out any parts you don't think he needs to know."

"Of course, Commander." Miranda strips out of her greaves; beside her, Vakarian shifts, hip cocked in that insouciant pose that makes him look like an arrogant bastard. _He's_ never out of his armor.

"Tell Joker to lay in a course for the Citadel," Shepard adds. Vakarian's been a good boy. Did his job, shot straight, didn't mouth-off too much. They'll run his little errand after they refuel.

He doesn't need to know that yet.

She pushes her way out of the room without another word; before the cabin door closes, she hears Miranda say, "The reality of the Commander is...very different from what I'd expected."

Vakarian snorts. "She's a hard woman to work with, sure, but you can't deny that she gets results."

"No," Miranda says. "No, I can't deny that."

* * *

When she sleeps she dreams, and so she doesn't sleep often. (The implants help.) She dreams all the usual dreams, the panorama of images that have followed her since sixteen, since twenty, since twenty-nine. Behind her eyelids, in the sharpest relief and with full surround-sound, she sees her mother's face peeled back behind a batarian knife, watches her father crumble at the shot in his gut, feels herself swallowed by a horror too large to comprehend, finds herself writhing in space without a lick of air only to find that she doesn't need to breathe, that's she's been a geth, that's she's been a Reaper all along...

She dreams in black and red, the dark of deep space and the pale scarlet of human viscera; and she no longer wakes gasping from those dreams but only silent, resigned. When she wakes from the black and red dreams she slips from her bed and goes to the shower or to her console.

But sometimes she dreams in blue...

* * *

Shepard's mother fought in the First Contact War. She was, in all things, the shaping force of her daughter's life. She taught Shepard marksmanship; she taught Shepard shipboard protocol; she taught Shepard war.

"Turians are tough bastards," her mother used to say, "but at least they're mostly honest, unlike the bluegills. Don't let it get in the way of working with 'em if you have to, Janie, but never forget that you're human and they're not. Birds and fishes weren't meant to live together."

They _are_ tough bastards, though.

Shepard tries to keep an even rotation for team missions, but she finds it difficult not to lean on Vakarian. He knows her on the battlefield, he was there from—from almost the beginning, and he's a good shot. An excellent shot. Those hawk's eyes of his are good for something.

He's funny. (That still catches her off guard.) It's a weakness of his, one of many, just another chink in an armor she expected to be thicker. Aren't turians supposed to be dour?

* * *

They fuck in the forward battery—

But wait. She's getting ahead of herself.

* * *

Death took nothing from her. She's stronger than before, faster—that's the cybernetics—she's harder, tougher, can take a bullet and keep going, can shoot straighter, can run longer, can seize the battlefield with two pawns and a crippled queen before her enemy even understands she's arrived. She wakes up in the morning and thinks, _Who will I hate today, _and some days it's Saren who fuels the white-hot star behind her ribcage, and sometimes it's the Reapers; sometimes it's the Council and sometimes it's Anderson; sometimes it's Shanxi and sometimes it's Torfan_._

Sometimes it's slavers. Sometimes it's slaves.

She remembers that krogan—Wrex, was his name. He was a tough bastard, too, canny as hell and as dangerous as an N7 in a firefight. Shepard shot him on Virmire. She hadn't hesitated; it was a clean kill, honest, for his own good. He probably would've appreciated it, if he'd been able to see through his anger with the kind of clarity Shepard uses to see through hers.

Some mornings she wakes up too tired to be angry, and then she thinks, _Who can I hate today_. She remembers that krogan, useless, throwing his life away because he couldn't accept his people's fate; and then the supernova behind her heart flares to life, eats her from the inside out, burns her clean of flesh and thought until she is nothing but light and purpose and rage.

* * *

They dock near Zakera Ward and Shepard, feeling indolent, unleashes her crew for shore leave. The Cerberus types stick near the ship, uncomfortable in mixed company; Jack ranges the farthest of all, until Shepard sometimes thinks the biotic will board a shuttle headed for some far-flung system and never come back. Good for her. Great for her. One of them should live long enough to tell the story of the Normandy.

(Shepard has loved only rarely, but the ship—she loves the ship.)

Vakarian she takes with her. They stop for lunch first. He's wound too tight to eat, tears off a couple of bites of a protein bar anyway. Shepard takes the time to relish all three of her courses; the cucumber bisque in particular is excellent, although if it was made with real cucumbers she'll bite off her own thumb.

"Listen," she says. "I follow you on this wild goose chase, I need to know you're not going to fly off the handle and get me killed. You keep your head, you listen if I give you orders, and I don't care if you gun down Sidonis in broad daylight, understood?"

Garrus rears back in his seat, stares her down with those deep-set eyes; Shepard notes clinically that she feels like she's been judged and found wanting. After a moment he tilts his head to the side and says, "Understood, Commander."

"Wonderful. Come on, Bailey's waiting." She shoves back her stool and drops a handful of credit chits on the counter. Enough her her meal. Not enough for his.

* * *

Later, they'll fuck in the hanger; and Shepard will turn her face away.

* * *

She steps between a killer and his target, nonchalant, doesn't think twice, just puts herself where the horizontal meets the vertical, smack in the middle of Vakarian's crosshairs. Doesn't think once. Won't think about it at all until she's back on the ship.

Shepard doesn't hesitate to put herself on the wrong end of a rifle. She's a soldier (better than that: a marine), and her _job_ is to put herself between the business end of a gun and any civilian under threat. Barring that—or, fine, any situation where she needs to project swagger to make a point—or any situation where someone's trying to fuck her over—

The point is: Putting herself in the center of a sniper's scope was a fucking stupid thing to do. Snipers aren't like other soldiers. For them, it's personal. They look at you from half a klick away and they can see the whites of your eyes, they can see the nervous stutter in your hands, they can count your eyelashes, and they can kill you anyway. Shepard had stepped into that kill zone and had expected that Vakarian wouldn't shoot her, either with malice aforethought or because she was collateral in the way of his target, had expected that with such certainty that she hadn't even considered the danger.

Makes her angry. Makes her sharp.

Behind her chest, the molten star of her heart lurches, leaps, takes the hydrogen of her hate and burns it into helium, fuses it into the lithium of horror, crushes it beneath the weight of agony until nothing is left but iron.

* * *

"It was messy," Shepard says. "Shot like that, middle of the Citadel, where everyone could see? Sure you weren't caught on camera?"

"Please, Shepard," Vakarian says. His voice is low, heavy, and certain, none of the trembling tones of wonder she remembers from the SR-1. "Zakera can barely afford to recycle its air. If C-Sec has enough money to set up cameras, it sure as hell won't be in the slums." He swings around to face her, eyes glinting; the damn visor makes it seem like he's seeing her from a hundred light-years away. "Not having second thoughts about murder, are you?"

"Can't save everyone," she says. "Hell, can't save anyone. Leave that to the politicians."

"Yeah," Vakarian says. Whether in agreement or doubt, Shepard can't tell. "Anyway, thanks. It feels...well, it's something, to have that responsibility off my back."

They are very close. She can feel his breath stir her hair. There's no reason to be this close.

_If I let you do this,_ Shepard thinks, _what does that make me?_

(A sinner a traitor a soldier a lover a fucker a bleeder a yearner a traitor a traitor a traitor—)

Perverse. It makes her perverse.

She cranes her neck, breathes out against his face. Waits.


End file.
